The author resolves a conflict between Frege's view that the
cognitive significance of coreferential names may be distinct and
Kaplan's view that since coreferential names have the same
"character", they have the same cognitive significance. A distinction
is drawn between an expression's "character" and its "cognitive
character". The former yields the denotation of an expression
relative to a context (and individual); the latter yields the abstract
sense of an expression relative to a context (and individual). Though
coreferential names have the same character, they may have distinct
cognitive characters. Propositions involving these abstract senses
play an important role in explaining de dicto belief contexts.